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I know you won’t believe it because it happened to me and I’m still in shock.

Do you see that goal there? “to have a Baby Boy!” FAIL.

The unthinkable has happened. I am sitting at home and am still pregnant.

After a sleepless night last night, I got a call at 5am saying to come in for the induction and we arrived at the hospital about an hour later. I hadn’t dilated at all since my appointment last week, so they put some kind of drug (I can’t remember what it’s called) on my cervix to make it soften and dilate.

Over the course of the next 12 hours I started having contractions about 1.5-3 minutes apart, but they never really started to get painful or intense.

Please refer to printout on the right for proof that I WAS actually having contractions.

My doctor finally came in and checked my progress and absolutely n.o.t.h.i.n.g. had changed during the 12 hours I had been there. What? Yes. No progress.

Our doctor gave us our options:
1. Go home and wait a few days
2. Have the doctor break my water and hope things got going

Even though the thought of having him break my water was really appealing at the time (because then we definitely would be having a baby within 24 hours), we realized that the risks were just too high. After all, nothing happened after the first round of drugs, so if there still was no progress after that I would just end up having to have a c-section. No thank you.

So here I am at home, hanging out with Michael and my mama (who traveled here just for this… sorry mom!), trying to figure out what to do for the next few days. Any ideas? Watch more 24? Um, yes, don’t mind if I do. Obviously there will be another few rounds of self-therapy self-tanning…

Does this picture look familiar? Yep, totally been here/done this before…

Sorry for the radio silence yesterday, I was busy getting all my last-minute plans taken care of. Just to update you, the NST went great and I am good to go for tomorrow morning at 6am! So yes, in case you were wondering, today was the longest day of my life. But, interestingly, the longest day for the exact opposite reason that Jack Bauer’s days are so long…

Yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of 24 to pass the time. No big deal.

I have a feeling that tonight will be even longer though. I’m a little worried that I’ll be going into labor without getting much sleep the night before, but I figure the night-before-a-race rule applies here (you know, the one that says it doesn’t matter how little sleep you get the night before the race as long as you got a lot two nights before? I’m hoping running marathons and giving birth translate to similar physical exertion).

So get excited because the next time you hear from me I will no longer be host to a fetus but will have a tiny little person living outside of my body. What? Yes, seriously. Bah! I can’t believe it!

Ps: Um, I have pretty much the best pals ever. Thank you all for the comments/advice/questions or for even just reading! You guys rock. Seriously. Just makes me so happy. Go buy yourself a frozen yogurt to celebrate how awesome you are. Mmm.

You know that saying ‘no news is good news’? Well turns out it’s a dirty lie.

I know this because I had a doctor’s appointment today and found out that not much is going on in terms of progress for me. I’m somewhere between 1 and 2 centimeters dilated and about 60% effaced. Just to recap, I was a little under 1 centimeter dilated and 50% effaced at my last appointment a week ago. Sigh.

All last week I could feel the little guy using his head as a battering ram against my cervix (which, btw, feels about as awesome as it sounds), so I was pretty sure I would see a bit more progress, but no dice. And I was planning on having my membranes stripped today but I wasn’t dilated enough. Sad day.

He (my doctor) also told me that I have a “pretty decent sized” little person in me, which, he went on to explain, means that the little monster is probably “only” 8 or 9 lbs. Does that seem gigantic to anyone else? Because I’m thinking it sounds absolutely huge.

On the bright side, I still have a few more days to process.

I’ve been thinking seriously all week about this whole “labor” thing… and also the whole “baby” thing, and it’s a little overwhelming. I mean, I obviously knew what the end result of my adventures through pregnancy was, but I’m feeling seriously, seriously under-qualified to deal with the massive project of raising a human baby into a successful adult.

So even though I feel like I’ve been waiting for years to go into labor, I’m really appreciating the extra time at this very moment.

One thing for sure is that I’m definitely down to days (and not weeks… or months…) because I have an induction scheduled for next week. The plan is that I’m going to go into the hospital for a Fetal Non-Stress Test (remember the last time I had one of those?) and if everything looks good I’ll be induced on Wednesday morning. 6 DAYS! What? I know, crazy.

Having an induction makes me really nervous that I won’t be able to do a natural birth. When labor is induced, doctors use a drug called Pitocin, a synthetic form of the hormone oxytocin which stimulates contractions. With Pitocin, however, contractions come a lot harder and stronger, making them waaay more painful than natural contractions… meaning that it’s much more difficult to deal with the pain. And. When labor is induced the chances of a cesarean increase as well.

I guess what this all boils down to is that I have had a bit of a stressful day trying to wrap my mind around everything. I’m trying to stay positive, but I’m also (kinda) panicking a little. Only 6 more days of pregnancy… going into labor… the possibility of not being able to follow anything in my plan… coming home with a baby… my life changing forever… Yikes. That’s a lot to deal with.

Um, yes. Now that you’re thinking about it, I wouldn’t mind some words of advice… The countdown is on, after all, and I’m feeling the deadline coming up quick…